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MIND SOUP: An Egyption lawyer has filed a lawsuit again the Egyptian Minister of Justice Mamdouh Merhi and others accusing them of misleading the Egyptian people by hiding the truth.

The lawyer, Hamed Sayed Makki, claimed in the case memo that the minister has been hiding the death of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

What's more interesting, or maybe unbelievable, is that he believe that Mubarak has been dead since 2004 while winning the past elections in 2005 (a year after his alleged death).

According to Horiyatna radio station, the lawsuit said that this is a "local and international scam to fool us about Mubarak's life."

The source revealed more detail about his alleged death. It said that Mubarak has passed away in Germany on the 16th of June, 2004 while undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumor from his ear.

The lawsuit adds that Mubarak underwent this operation secretly, and after the surgery, the doctor declared him dead.

MIND SOUP: Journalist for the Lebanese daily Annahar, Hiyam al-Kosayfi, expressed her anger about being denied wine in a hotel restaurant in Down Town Beirut during Ramadan.

This hotel which was "founded by a Maronite Christian and blessed with sacred water by a priest" has made it a policy not to serve any form of alcoholic beverages during the month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset on food, drinks, and sex, and usually abide strictly to Islamic Law during this month.

According to al-Kosayfi, she said the that waiter recommended a good bottle of wine, but then embarrassingly apologized and took back the wine glasses from the table after realizing the policy.

The (Christian) writer and her crew made a fuss about this incident until a manager approached them and offered to serve them wine in blue tinted glasses, as not to alarm the Muslim customers who were having breakfast (iftar) there. She proudly announces that they refused the offer, and declared t…

Below is a message from the AUB Music Club who will be participating in the Hamra Street Festival which will take place on 10, 11, 12 September. ﻿﻿ The festival will include two major events: September 10: - Inauguration of the Festival under the patronage of the Prime Minister, Beirut Deputies and the Hamra Committee. - The Big Hamra Parade

﻿﻿ September 11 and 12: - Stands Activities, Street animations, Music concerts, Dance, Plays, Kids Arena, Fireworks etc... The AUB Music Club would like to invite you in participating in this festival through: Big Hamra Parade (September 10) ﻿﻿ - The AUB music club will provide you with comfortable/funky costumes and percussions. You just need to wear the costumes, show up on time, improvise on your percussions (IF you want) and have fun! The parade will take place at 5.30 p.m and will last for two hours tops. - The AUB Music Club will provide you with a two-meter banner, printed with the logo of the AUB Music Club so that you proudly carry it on during t…

HEALTH JOCKEY: A previous investigation on rhesus monkeys claimed that TRIM5a safeguards these animals from HIV. It was affirmed that after the protein latches on to a HIV virus, other TRIM5a proteins accumulate and destroy the virus. This protein is also present in humans but was assumed to work in the opposite way. Instead of protecting against HIV, it seemed to guard against some other viruses. TRIM5a which may contain almost 500 amino acid subunits is predicted to be an effective therapeutic agent by the researchers. The investigation was triggered for figuring out the components in TRIM5a which allow the protein to destroy viruses.

Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System senior researcher alleged, “Scientists have been trying to develop antiviral therapies for only about 75 years. Evolution has been playing this game for millions of years, and it has identified a point of intervention that we still know very little about.”

And I thought we've got it bad in Lebanon. Apparently, in China its far worse.

According to Associate Press on Monday, thousands of cars were stuck on the road in a 100-kilometer (62-mile) traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days.

"The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later," the Global Times said.

The state-run newspaper said the jam between Beijing and Jining city had "given birth to a mini-economy with local merchants capitalizing on the stranded drivers' predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices."

That stretch of highway linking Beijing with the northern province of Hebei and the Inner Mongolia region has become increasingly prone to massive jams as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods.

TELEGRAPH: Mark Boyle, 31, gave up using money in November 2008. He lives in a caravan that he got from Freecycle (uk.freecycle.org), which is parked at an organic farm near Bristol, where Boyle volunteers three days a week. He grows his own food, has a wood-burning stove and produces electricity from a solar panel (it cost £360 before the experiment started). He has a mobile phone for incoming calls only and a solar-powered laptop. Boyle, who has been vegan for six years, set up the Freeconomy in 2007 (justfortheloveofit.org), an online network that encourages people to share skills or possessions and now has 17,000 members. The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living (Oneworld Publications, £10.99) is out now.

"It all started in a pub. My friend and I were talking about all the problems in the world, such as sweatshops, environmental destruction, factory farms, animal testing, wars over resources. I realised they were all, in their own way, connected to money.

LIVE SCIENCE: A maternal ancestor to all living humans called mitochondrial Eve likely lived about 200,000 years ago, at roughly the same time anatomically modern humans are believed to have emerged, a new review study confirms.

The results are based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA. Found in the energy-producing centers of cells, mitochondrial DNA is only passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman.

However, this doesn't mean she was the first modern woman, rather it indicates that only her descendants survive to the present day.

"There is always some other female that predated mitochondrial Eve, whose DNA didn't make it up to modernity," said Marek Kimmel, a professor of statistics at Rice University. "So the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less than the age of the true, first female modern human."

A molecular clock

While most of an organism's DNA is contained in the nuclei of its cells, mitochondria also contain genetic m…

AP: A Saudi judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man's spinal cord as punishment after he was convicted of attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him, the brother of the victim said Thursday.

Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, 22, was left paralyzed and subsequently lost a foot after a fight more than two years ago. He asked a judge in northwestern Tabuk province to impose an equivalent punishment on his attacker under Islamic law, his brother Khaled al-Mutairi told The Associated Press by telephone from there.

He said one of the hospitals, located in Tabuk, responded that it is possible to damage the spinal cord, but it added that the operation would have to be done at another more specialized facility. Saudi newspapers reported that a second hospital in the capital Riyadh declined, saying it could not inflict such harm.

Administrative offices of two of the hospitals and the court in Tabuk were closed for the Saudi weekend beginning Thursd…

YAHOO: If you want to avoid the worst-paying college degrees, think twice before choosing a college major that involves children.

Included among the 20 worst-paying college degrees are elementary education, special education, social work and child and family studies. That's the conclusion of the latest annual study of college degrees by Payscale, Inc. that compiled starting and mid-career pay for dozens of college majors.

Child and family studies earned the honors as the worst-paying college major. The average graduate earns a beginning salary of $29,500. What's equally discouraging is that the salary of someone in this field will barely budge after 15 years in the profession.

Food is another common theme for students who major in the worst-paying college degrees. Students who earn degrees in horticulture, dietetics and the culinary arts are more likely to end up struggling financially.

College DegreeStarting PayMid-Career Pay1. Child and Family Studies$29,500$38,4002. Elementa…

SALEM NEWS: Oceanographic surveyors of the sea floor in the area of the Bermuda Triangle and the North Sea region between continental Europe and Great Britain have discovered significant quantities of methane hydrates and older eruption sites.

According to two research scientists the mystery of vanished ships and airplanes in the region dubbed "The Bermuda Triangle" has been solved.

Futurist Project(Joe's Box)After five years of hard work and research my sister made a nice final project for her diploma, a nice creative project that i personally loved and i guess we need those kind of projects as Lebanon is witnessing an unprecedented boom in shopping malls. A museum of archeology and history In Byblos as the city is a tourist destination visited annually by many tourists. [...]

Where are the tourists?(Blog Baladi)In June 21, Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud said that the number of visitors to Lebanon has increased by 26.6 percent compared to this time last year, the National News Agency (NNA) reported on Wednesday. Since then, we haven’t heard any updates on the number of tourists in Lebanon and to be honest, i think the numbers are going down and drastically. [...]

AP: Dread of the unknown hung in the air as Lynn France typed two words into the search box on Facebook: the name of the woman with whom she believed her husband was having an affair.

Click. And there it was, the stuff of nightmares for any spouse, cuckolded or not. Wedding photos. At Walt Disney World, no less, featuring her husband literally dressed as Prince Charming. His new wife, a pretty blonde, was a glowing Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by footmen.

"I was numb with shock, to tell you the truth," says France, an occupational therapist from Westlake, a Cleveland suburb. "There was like an album of 200 pictures on there. Their whole wedding."

Affairs were once shadowy matters, illicit encounters whispered about and often difficult to prove. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter and lightning-fast communication, the notion of privacy is fast becoming obsolete. From flirtatious text messages to incriminating e-mails, marital indiscretions are much easier to track…

BBC: Lebanon has joined a growing list of countries concerned about the use of Blackberry phones.

The country's Telecoms Regulatory Authority said it will assess security concerns about the device.

The move follows that of the United Arab Emirates which has threatened to ban some Blackberry services.

Saudi Arabia has called on telecom firms in the country to block the messenger function on Blackberry handsets from 6 August.

All three countries said that security concerns were behind the ban.

"This is prompted by the increase of security issues that have been found with the telecommunications networks in Lebanon," Imad Hoballah, the chair of the country's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority told French news agency AFP.

"This is related to the ability of law enforcement agencies to access the data as may be required by law," he added.